Efficient Sales: Three Things You Must Know to Get to Yes Fast (Are You Doing These?)
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And now let’s talk about efficient sales…
The secret to creating more sales and more profits is efficient selling. This means identifying what motivates your customer and talking about that and only that. Get it right and you’ll speed every deal.
Read on to learn the three things you must understand if you’re going to close deals quickly. Miss any of these and your sale will stall.
Objective
Start with your customer’s objective. What do they want to accomplish and what do they want to avoid? What is the outcome that they’re willing to pay for? Linking your customer’s objective to your product creates value. If you’re discussing something that doesn’t meet their objective, there’s no value for them.
Typical high-level objectives include obtaining specific outcomes (my yard looks great), avoiding specific outcomes (no weeds or brown grass in my yard), and making a difficult outcome easier (power mower with a grass catcher makes it easy to keep the yard looking great).
Ask smart questions to identify their objective. “What are you trying to accomplish?” “What do you want to avoid?” “What will it be like when everything works perfectly?” “How will you know that you’ve got what you wanted?”
Priority
Priority means the order in which activities happen. If you have a customer who has said they’ll buy, but haven’t, there’s a priority issue. Money and time indicate priority: when your offering is a priority, they’ll make time for you and come up with the money. If it’s not a priority, you won’t get much of their attention or budget. The higher the priority, the more likely they’ll spend time and money now.
You can identify priority by understanding their deadlines. An impending deadline increases priority while no deadline means no priority. No deadline, no deal. A deadline can be personally set by the customer (I’m going to clean up the yard for our party this weekend) or by someone that’s important to them, such as their spouse, boss, or child (I’ve agreed to clean up the yard by this weekend).
Identify priorities with questions around when and where. “When is your party?” “What happens if you aren’t ready?” “Who are you trying to impress?” “Where does it need to be and when?” “Why is this important to you?””What is your price point for this?”
Criteria
Criteria lets you understand what they find valuable and how they’ll make their decision. Once you understand their criteria, you can focus on just discussing those issues and how your capabilities match their criteria.
Classic criteria are fast, cheap, and good. And today, customers want all three.
You can identify criteria by asking about what they’re looking for in detail. One great question is, “How will you know what to choose?” Or, “Do you have a list of capabilities you must have?” Or, “What’s on your wish list?”
Putting it All Together
Until you understand your customer’s objectives, priorities, and criteria, you have no idea of what creates value for them. Only then can you proceed with discussing your product in a way that is compelling and convincing because everything you say creates agreement. And as a bonus, you’re much less likely to raise objections.
Ask those questions and speed the deal!
Mark S A Smith
P.S. I’ve created an on-line training session that goes much deeper into creating value by automating the customer acquisition process without cold calling. Sign up here to take the class as my guest.